Season 12 of Secret Story, seventeen years after the launch of the reality TV show, replaces the original male voice with a mysterious, softer and almost robotic female voice. Is the new voice, which is in fact a “false voice”, played by an actress or an AI?
Who is the new voice? After spending months drooling over his return, Secret Story returned to TF1 on April 23… with a plot twist. The historic voice, known for its deep and enigmatic tone, is retiring. Dominique Duforest, who had been hiding behind the eye since 2007, announced in a video that he would not return to the adventure. At the start of the show, he passed the torch to “the new voice”, who is now a woman. She was the one who spoke to the candidates during the castings and the first one.
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In Secret Story, you have to be wary of appearances. At the end of the prime, the voice of Dominique Duforest made a comeback. “You thought I was gone”she first had fun, before reassuring viewers. “There is only one true voice, the one you have always known. (…) The new voice is in fact the false voice”, she reveals to two candidates, who won a game and become her accomplice. But, then, who is the false voice?
“ Here is the voice »: the miracle of synthetic voices?
With its final announcement, Secret Story surprised everyone.
Throughout the first show, social networks were angry with the new voice, deemed too soft, not enigmatic enough and without emotions… Even a candidate made fun of it with the phrase “The voice, you lack dynamism”, which was taken up with amusement by Internet users. Almost too perfect, the new voice does not have the charisma of the emblematic voice of the show, while rumors imagined a renowned voice, like that of SNCF or Mary Alice from Desperate Housewivesthe controls.
After the final reveal, several theories emerged. Among them :
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- The new voice is an artificial intelligence with pre-recorded sentences, hence its nickname “fake voice”.
- The new voice is an AI filter, which allows the real voice to hide its timbre.
- An actress hides behind the fake voice, but will leave after a week.
- A candidate hides behind the fake voice and will join the show next week.
Is it possible to generate such a realistic voice?
Is the fake voice generated by artificial intelligence? As you can imagine, TF1 and Endemol are unlikely to answer this question, even though they wish to maintain the mystery until the return of the real voice.
Only one thing is certain: the new voice, whether human or not, is trying to pass itself off as a robot. Almost all of the sentences spoken during the first broadcast lacked emotion, stopped abruptly after a syllable and suffered variations in tone. The laughing flights of the original voice, a central element of Secret Storyare not found in the new voice.
Technologically speaking, is it possible to generate an artificial voice in real time, which is also capable of reacting to candidates' sentences live? The answer is yes, but with significant risks of malfunction.
The work of OpenAI or INRIA in France (National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation) proves that synthetic voices are, today, indistinguishable from real voices. It is enough to train a machine for long hours and write a text so that it is read artificially (the voice of ChatGPT, available for free, imitates human phrasing), with breathing and interruptions in the right places . Such a revelation could be quite impressive for a show like Secret Storywhich would achieve a major media coup.
However, the risks are great. A typo can cause a pronunciation error, which would immediately reveal the nature of the fake voice. The most effective solution is to pre-record the sequences, at the risk of losing spontaneity. The problem is that, despite its lack of dynamism, the new voice is rather reactive. On a few occasions, notably at the end of the show, she even happened to catch a few words and take a few breaths, after an almost faultless performance at the beginning, which could only lead one to believe that she was not human.
If it is possible that the “false voice” of Secret Story is really false (it is impossible that Endemol would not have had this idea in the age of generative AI), the production of the show could have chosen a real actress, even if it meant modifying her voice , to guarantee the authenticity of the discussions. On the other hand, it seems unlikely that Dominique Duforest, the real voice, is hiding behind the false voice. An AI can change a voice, but not intonations. In short, it is more likely that it is an actress than an artificial intelligence, even if TF1 could make people believe in the use of an AI if a filter is used.
The candidates of Secret Story have a week to understand that they are not in the real adventure. During the big reveal, the human or artificial identity of the new voice should logically be revealed. The fact that the false voice is not that of a well-known personality intelligently maintains the mystery, since social networks are not able to identify it.
